Transitioning from study to working in the role of a health professional can be challenging, with the potential for high occupational stress levels and burnout. Ensuring minimal occupational stress and burnout while promoting compassion satisfaction and resilience is beneficial for the wellbeing of clinicians and their patients, as well as helping to reduce staff attrition. This study aimed to quantify levels of workplace stress, personal resilience, compassion satisfaction, secondary trauma stress and burnout in audiologists who had qualified five years ago or less.

Resilience, compassion satisfaction, occupational stress, secondary traumatic stress and burnout were measured in 34 clinical audiologists from around the world using an online questionnaire. The questionnaire was comprised of the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale (CD-RISC), the Professional Quality of Life (ProQOL) scale, the Audiology Occupational Stress Questionnaire (AOSQ) and demographic questions. Participants had been in the role for five years or less.

Respondents all had moderate-high levels of compassion satisfaction and low-moderate levels of burnout. Compassion satisfaction, overall stress level and secondary traumatic stress were significant predictors of burnout, while resilience was not a significant predictor of burnout. Items from the AOSQ showing significant positive correlations with burnout included: feeling like you’re always on the job; fatigue; lack of understanding from friends and family about your work as an audiologist; managing your social life outside work; and not having enough time to spend with friends and family.

Recently qualified clinical audiologists are relatively satisfied and fulfilled in their roles. They generally do not experience high levels of burnout. Clinicians with low overall stress levels and high compassion satisfaction were least likely to suffer from burnout. While workplace resilience training may be of use to audiologists in general, recently qualified clinicians may receive more benefit from the use of direct strategies to decrease their overall stress level, such as reducing work-related fatigue.